Download or read book Blessed Are the Organized written by Jeffrey Stout and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-12-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How ordinary citizens band together to bring about real change In an America where the rich and fortunate have free rein to do as they please, can the ideal of liberty and justice for all be anything but an empty slogan? Many Americans are doubtful, and have withdrawn into apathy and cynicism. But thousands of others are not ready to give up on democracy just yet. Working outside the notice of the national media, ordinary citizens across the nation are meeting in living rooms, church basements, synagogues, and schools to identify shared concerns, select and cultivate leaders, and take action. Their goal is to hold big government and big business accountable. In this important new book, Jeffrey Stout bears witness to the successes and failures of progressive grassroots organizing, and the daunting forces now arrayed against it. Stout tells vivid stories of people fighting entrenched economic and political interests around the country. From parents and teachers striving to overcome gang violence in South Central Los Angeles, to a Latino priest north of the Rio Grande who brings his parish into a citizens' organization, to the New Orleans residents who get out the vote by taking a jazz band through streets devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Stout describes how these ordinary people conceive of citizenship, how they acquire and exercise power, and how religious ideas and institutions contribute to their successes. The most important book on organizing and grassroots democracy in a generation, Blessed Are the Organized is a passionate and hopeful account of how our endangered democratic principles can be put into action.
Download or read book The Grassroots of Democracy written by Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reconstructing Democracy written by Justin Behrend and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within a few short years after emancipation, freedpeople of the Natchez District created a new democracy in the Reconstruction era, replacing the oligarchic rule of slaveholders and Confederates with a grassroots democracy that transformed the South after the Civil War.
Download or read book Community Power and Grassroots Democracy written by Michael Kaufman and published by International Development Research Centre Books. This book was released on 1997 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collected essays in this book provide a comparative examination of the process of grassroots mobilization and the development of community-based forms of popular democracy in Central and South America. The first part contains studies from individual countries on organizations ranging from those supported by governments and integrated into the country's political structure to groups that were organized against the existing political system. The organizations studied included those focusing on a particular concern, such as housing, and those with wide responsibility for community affairs; but all were organizations based on common interests where people lived and, in some cases, where people worked. The second part offers theme studies on men, women and differential participation; problems and meanings associated with decentralization, especially in relation to devolution of power to the local level and the construction of popular alternatives; and the competing theoretical paradigms of new social movements and resource mobilization.
Download or read book Populism s Power written by Laura Grattan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uprisings such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street signal a resurgence of populist politics in America, pitting the people against the establishment in a struggle over control of democracy. In the wake of its conservative capture during the Nixon and Reagan eras, and given its increasing ubiquity as a mainstream buzzword of politicians and pundits, democratic theorists and activists have been eager to abandon populism to right-wing demagogues and mega-media spin-doctors. Decades of liberal scholarship have reinforced this shift, turning the term "populism" into a pejorative in academic and public discourse. At best, they conclude that populism encourages an "empty" wish to express a unified popular will beyond the mediating institutions of government; at worst, it has been described as an antidemocratic temperament prone to fomenting backlash against elites and marginalized groups. Populism's Power argues that such routine dismissals of populism reinforce liberalism as the end of democracy. Yet, as long as democracy remains true to its meaning, that is, "rule by the people," democratic theorists and activists must be able to give an account of the people as collective actors. Without such an account of the people's power, democracy's future seems fixed by the institutions of today's neoliberal, managerial states, and not by the always changing demographics of those who live within and across their borders. Laura Grattan looks at how populism cultivates the aspirations of ordinary people to exercise power over their everyday lives and their collective fate. In evaluating competing theories of populism she looks at a range of populist moments, from cultural phenomena such as the Chevrolet ad campaign for "Our Country, Our Truck," to the music of Leonard Cohen, and historical and contemporary populist movements, including nineteenth-century Populism, the Tea Party, broad-based community organizing, and Occupy Wall Street. While she ultimately expresses ambivalence about both populism and democracy, she reopens the idea that grassroots movements--like the insurgent farmers and laborers, New Deal agitators, and Civil Rights and New Left actors of US history--can play a key role in democratizing power and politics in America.
Download or read book Inventing Local Democracy written by Rebecca Abers and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abers (political science, Center for Public Policy Research, U. of Brasília, Brazil) provides a close study of innovative city government in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Led by the Workers' Party, the city implemented a participatory budget program in which residents meet in their neighborhoods to determine budget priorities. Taking place in a city long dominated by patronage politics and elite rule, the story is both a sociopolitical study of the impact that state- sponsored participatory forums can have on civil society and a contribution to the theory and practical possibilities of participatory democracy.--
Download or read book Japan s Living Politics written by Tessa Morris-Suzuki and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a rise of populism and decline of public confidence in many of the formal institutions of democracy. This crisis of democracy has stimulated searches for alternative ways of understanding and enacting politics. Against this background, Tessa Morris-Suzuki explores the long history of informal everyday political action in the Japanese context. Despite its seemingly inflexible and monolithic formal political system, Japan has been the site of many fascinating small-scale experiments in 'informal life politics': grassroots do-it-yourself actions which seek not to lobby governments for change, but to change reality directly, from the bottom up. She explores this neglected history by examining an interlinked series of informal life politics experiments extending from the 1910s to the present day.
Download or read book Green Parties in Transition written by Paul Lucardie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When green parties emerged in the 1980s, not only did they question established ideas about nature and economic growth, they also challenged the 'iron law' of Roberto Michels that all parties inevitably follow a similar path towards informal concentration of power and oligarchy. Grass-roots democracy was both an ideological tenet and an organizational project for practically all green parties. These days the greens have lost their glamour and innocence. They have grown up and even joined governing coalitions in several countries. Did they leave grass-roots democracy by the roadside on the way to power? This book investigates to what extent green parties have remained true to their identity or have been transformed. Country specialists analyze the development of green parties in 14 countries across the world - not only Western Europe but also Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. These analyses also offer clues on broader questions about party types and party change in contemporary democracies.
Download or read book Democracy on the Margins written by Trevor Ngwane and published by Wildcat. This book was released on 2021-02-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating ethnography of the democratic organization of shack settlements in South Africa.
Download or read book Democracy from the Grass Roots written by Joseph I. Abrahams and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2007-04-02 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an historic turn, grassroots America has overcome its apathy and cyclic reversion to the ways of the past, last induced by Islamic fundamentalism. Newly cognizant of its inherent interests, grassroots America has responded to the vision of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, and fl ocked to the polls. The emotions of politics take front and center. In Democracy From The Grassroots: A Guide to Creative Politics, we examine in depth the political passion of the grassroots and these emergent leaders. Beginning with an inspiring historical overview of grassroots politics in America, the author then guides us through its organizational structures the political clubs, committees, councils, caucuses, and workshops wherein real people work to create real change. A chapter devoted to the analysis of issues, the systems which determine their resolution, and their role in the political campaign, serves to enlighten and motivate the ideal lead-in to an exhaustive section on training. A concise summary integrates the hypotheses set forth about the role of grassroots politics in American social development. And in a unique and compelling twist, that model is then compared to the individual's development as a person. Written by psychoanalyst, political activist and scholar Dr. Joseph Abrahams, Democracy From the Grassroots, A Guide to Creative Political Action presents the pioneering work of three decades in the grassroots trenches. At once a vibrant history lesson and a call to action, this slender volume is as lush in practical howto as it is in thoughtful refl ection and insight. The appendix is remarkable for its richly annotated bibliography and a revealing chronicle of the events and issues of American grassroots movements.
Download or read book From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court written by Peter F. Lau and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-07 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps more than any other Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education and American Democracy Series title: Constitutional Conflicts Ser.
Download or read book Stoking the Fire of Democracy written by Stephen Noble Smith and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Smith is a voice from and for the next generation of fighters for social justice, giving his colleagues an introduction to grassroots organizing based on his own experiences in places as diverse as Harvard University, Botswana and Chicago. For four years, he was the lead organizer of PACT, a grassroots organization for young adults affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. Stoking the Fire of Democracy explains how organizations are built and sustained, how they go into action around issues of common concern, how they exercise power, and how they learn from their successes and failures. For young people who want to know what comes next, this book will help them become what Saul Alinksy called "the fire under the boiler of democracy."
Download or read book Democracy in the Making written by Kathleen M. Blee and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-03-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Democracy in the Making, Kathleen M. Blee provides an in-depth look at modern grassroots activism, and reveals its simultaneous power and fragility. In the process, she examines the struggle between democratic vision and strategic reality that shapes each organization's trajectory and determines its ultimate success or failure.
Download or read book Mobilizing for Democracy written by Vera Schatten Coelho and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobilizing for Democracy is an in-depth study into how ordinary citizens and their organizations mobilize to deepen democracy. Featuring a collection of new empirical case studies from Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this important new book illustrates how forms of political mobilization, such as protests, social participation, activism, litigation and lobbying, engage with the formal institutions of representative democracy in ways that are core to the development of democratic politics. No other volume has brought together examples from such a broad Southern spectrum and covering such a diversity of actors: rural and urban dwellers, transnational activists, religious groups, politicians and social leaders. The cases illuminate the crucial contribution that citizen mobilization makes to democratization and the building of state institutions, and reflect the uneasy relationship between citizens and the institutions that are designed to foster their political participation.
Download or read book Grassroot Democracy in Indian Society written by G. Palanithurai and published by Concept Publishing Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Upending American Politics written by Theda Skocpol and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was startling, as was the victory of Donald Trump eight years later. Because both presidents were unusual and gained office backed by Congresses controlled by their own parties, their elections kick-started massive counter-movements. The Tea Party starting in 2009 and the "resistance" after November 2016 transformed America's political landscape. Upending American Politics offers a fresh perspective on recent upheavals, tracking the emergence and spread of local voluntary citizens' groups, the ongoing activities of elite advocacy organizations and consortia of wealthy donors, and the impact of popular and elite efforts on the two major political parties and candidate-led political campaigns. Going well beyond national surveys, Theda Skocpol, Caroline Tervo, and their contributors use organizational documents, interviews, and local visits to probe changing organizational configurations at the national level and in swing states. This volume analyzes conservative politics in the first section and progressive responses in the second to provide a clear overview of US politics as a whole. By highlighting evidence from the state level, it also reveals the important interplay of local and national trends.
Download or read book Slow Democracy written by Susan Clark and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconnecting with the sources of decisions that affect us, and with the processes of democracy itself, is at the heart of 21st-century sustainable communities. Slow Democracy chronicles the ways in which ordinary people have mobilized to find local solutions to local problems. It invites us to bring the advantages of "slow" to our community decision making. Just as slow food encourages chefs and eaters to become more intimately involved with the production of local food, slow democracy encourages us to govern ourselves locally with processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and citizen powered. Susan Clark and Woden Teachout outline the qualities of real, local decision making and show us the range of ways that communities are breathing new life into participatory democracy around the country. We meet residents who seize back control of their municipal water systems from global corporations, parents who find unique solutions to seemingly divisive school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizens across the nation who have designed local decision-making systems to solve the problems unique to their area in ways that work best for their communities. Though rooted in the direct participation that defined our nation's early days, slow democracy is not a romantic vision for reigniting the ways of old. Rather, the strategies outlined here are uniquely suited to 21st-century technologies and culture.If our future holds an increased focus on local food, local energy, and local economy, then surely we will need to improve our skills at local governance as well.
